Returning player - plz halp

I just recently redownloaded the game after a LONG break - I stopped right around the time mods and the Rancor raid were released, I think. Obviously there is now a massive gap between me and "being even remotely competitive," I'm just trying to figure out the best thing to focus on as there are a lot of new things and none of them are super accessible to me at the moment. I did snag a couple of bundles and spent the crystals I forgot I had on some extra credits and training droids, but I'm still looking at months before I make any real headway.

Ships - starting basically from scratch here. One of the bundles I grabbed was Boba Fett, so I do have Slave 1, which I guess helps a bit? From a bit of reading I understand that I need to work on these for "zeta" mats, though my characters aren't even high enough to need those yet, so I'm not sure how urgent that is.

Mods - Have almost none. The only mod challenge I can complete all the way is health, and I can do tier 2 of the defense mods. The other types I've unlocked are inaccessible due to the factions required, and I'm stuck on stage 7 of mod battles at the moment as far as unlocking the rest. SUPER in the dark as to how much difference these make and when to start worrying about them. Just slapping in the junky ones I got from clearing mod battles at the moment as I figure it's better than nothing.

Gear/Levels/Stars - No clue how to prioritize here. I used to just steamroll my Galactic War with my arena team, which I've quickly realized is no longer doable with all the insanely powerful newer characters out there. I'm just not sure what the best way is to improve. Here's my roster link: https://swgoh.gg/u/jarvind/collection/

Factions - I've got little to no faction synergies going with my current batch - usually I just use Phasma as lead and hope for extra attacks. I clearly need to change that, just not sure which would be best to focus on. I see a lot of talk about Phoenix being godmode, but given that I have none of them, I feel like it'd be better to get one or two other faction squads online before I worry about them. Right now it seems like Jedi, Nightsister, Resistance or First Order would be my best options.

Guild - I joined a guild that is doing heroics semi-regularly, though it's mainly 4-5 heavy hitters dominating the scoreboard with everyone else getting in minimal damage. It's providing a decent flow of guild coins and gear, though I do wonder if maybe looking for a more evenly distributed guild doing slightly lower tiers wouldn't be a good idea.

TLDR version: Player come back long break. What do?

- What faction good improve?
- Mods make much good? How much worry about?
- Gear? Shards? Not know what prioritize! https://swgoh.gg/u/jarvind/collection/
- Get participation guild rewards. Good? Look for new?

Replies

Ships: Work on Grand Moff Tarkin's Capital Ship until you can get Thrawn and his respective Capital Ship. Don't worry about Zeta mats until you are lvl 85.

Mods: Work on Health tiers until you three star the 3rd tier, farm them to put onto your squad arena characters and characters used for events, challenges, and mod challenges especially. That's what I am doing. Research mods and how to use them on certain characters, I am still working that out, but Speed is the most important stat.

Gear/Levels/Stars: Don't worry about stars to much, just star up your characters that you use in events and challenges to 3 star them. Levels don't matter besides for Gear and Abilities. I see you have a few mismatched characters up there. Work on First Order's gear and work on Resistance for the Speed Mod challenge.

Factions: You will be using First Order for now as you have most of the essential ones. Get Kylo Ren (Unmasked) [Cantina 3-F] as fast as possible and gear him up as he will need to be your First Order leader. His ship is also very powerful and is farmed there. Star and gear up the First Order Officer, First Order Tie Pilot, and First Order Stormtrooper to put them in your team later. First Order Stormtrooper will replace Phasma as she isn't too good unless she is leader.

Guild: I think that you should stay in the guild you are currently in to get good gear, needed very badly by a lot of characters in the higher levels of gear. The guild tokens are useful for buying gear and character shards that you need. Only buy gear that is crucial to your characters you are working on, once they are good, you can work up others. With the inflow of Raid Han and/or General Kenobi shards from the Heroic raids, you will be able to get a really good team as soon as you can get those characters 7 star and high gear, they are very powerful.

Squad Arena: Use Phasma leader still, Rey (Scavenger), Princess Leia, Stormtrooper Han, and Kylo Ren until you can get your First Order up.

Characters: You need Princess Leia, Stormtrooper Han, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Old Ben), Farmboy Luke, and R2-D2 for Commander Luke Skywalker, so star up an Empire team to get R2. Don't worry too much about it right now, just focus on First Order. Commander Luke is a very good character, one of the best.

After you work up your First Order team, you need to start farming the Phoenix Squadron characters: Hera Syndulla, Ezra Bridger, Chopper, Kanan Jarrus, Garazeb (Zeb) Orrelios, and Sabine Wren (optional, she is super hard to farm). The Phoenix characters will be used for the Thrawn event, which is very difficult. Thrawn is one of the best characters in the game.

Jedi aren't too good right now, so only star them up if you really want a 7 star Grand Master Yoda.

Empire teams are useful, so star up your current Empire characters and use a Rebel team to get Emperor Palpatine (If your current Rebels can't get him, you should be able to gear and mod them until you can, he is a pretty easy event).

That is all I have for you! Sorry it is so long, I was trying to cover everything!

TL;DR

- Work on Health mods until you can get a Resistance team for Speed mods
- Gear and star First Order Characters you have now, get Kylo Ren (Unmasked) and replace Phasma with First Order Stormtrooper once he is high enough.
- Stay in your guild
- After First Order, get Phoenix
- Don't work too much on Jedi
- Get legendary and Hero's Journey characters (not Rey (Jedi Training) yet, she is very hard to get)

I make character kits! Ask me and I will try my best to make one for fun.

Ships: Work on Grand Moff Tarkin's Capital Ship until you can get Thrawn and his respective Capital Ship. Don't worry about Zeta mats until you are lvl 85.

Mods: Work on Health tiers until you three star the 3rd tier, farm them to put onto your squad arena characters and characters used for events, challenges, and mod challenges especially. That's what I am doing. Research mods and how to use them on certain characters, I am still working that out, but Speed is the most important stat.

Gear/Levels/Stars: Don't worry about stars to much, just star up your characters that you use in events and challenges to 3 star them. Levels don't matter besides for Gear and Abilities. I see you have a few mismatched characters up there. Work on First Order's gear and work on Resistance for the Speed Mod challenge.

Factions: You will be using First Order for now as you have most of the essential ones. Get Kylo Ren (Unmasked) [Cantina 3-F] as fast as possible and gear him up as he will need to be your First Order leader. His ship is also very powerful and is farmed there. Star and gear up the First Order Officer, First Order Tie Pilot, and First Order Stormtrooper to put them in your team later. First Order Stormtrooper will replace Phasma as she isn't too good unless she is leader.

Guild: I think that you should stay in the guild you are currently in to get good gear, needed very badly by a lot of characters in the higher levels of gear. The guild tokens are useful for buying gear and character shards that you need. Only buy gear that is crucial to your characters you are working on, once they are good, you can work up others. With the inflow of Raid Han and/or General Kenobi shards from the Heroic raids, you will be able to get a really good team as soon as you can get those characters 7 star and high gear, they are very powerful.

Squad Arena: Use Phasma leader still, Rey (Scavenger), Princess Leia, Stormtrooper Han, and Kylo Ren until you can get your First Order up.

Characters: You need Princess Leia, Stormtrooper Han, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Old Ben), Farmboy Luke, and R2-D2 for Commander Luke Skywalker, so star up an Empire team to get R2. Don't worry too much about it right now, just focus on First Order. Commander Luke is a very good character, one of the best.

After you work up your First Order team, you need to start farming the Phoenix Squadron characters: Hera Syndulla, Ezra Bridger, Chopper, Kanan Jarrus, Garazeb (Zeb) Orrelios, and Sabine Wren (optional, she is super hard to farm). The Phoenix characters will be used for the Thrawn event, which is very difficult. Thrawn is one of the best characters in the game.

Jedi aren't too good right now, so only star them up if you really want a 7 star Grand Master Yoda.

Empire teams are useful, so star up your current Empire characters and use a Rebel team to get Emperor Palpatine (If your current Rebels can't get him, you should be able to gear and mod them until you can, he is a pretty easy event).

That is all I have for you! Sorry it is so long, I was trying to cover everything!

TL;DR

- Work on Health mods until you can get a Resistance team for Speed mods
- Gear and star First Order Characters you have now, get Kylo Ren (Unmasked) and replace Phasma with First Order Stormtrooper once he is high enough.
- Stay in your guild
- After First Order, get Phoenix
- Don't work too much on Jedi
- Get legendary and Hero's Journey characters (not Rey (Jedi Training) yet, she is very hard to get)

This guy nailed it!
However I’d also like to throw in this.

- First Order will also earn you BB8 if you are planning on using them in arena and BB8 is amazing (also helps you earn Jedi Training Rey eventually.

Ships: Work on Grand Moff Tarkin's Capital Ship until you can get Thrawn and his respective Capital Ship. Don't worry about Zeta mats until you are lvl 85.

Mods: Work on Health tiers until you three star the 3rd tier, farm them to put onto your squad arena characters and characters used for events, challenges, and mod challenges especially. That's what I am doing. Research mods and how to use them on certain characters, I am still working that out, but Speed is the most important stat.

Gear/Levels/Stars: Don't worry about stars to much, just star up your characters that you use in events and challenges to 3 star them. Levels don't matter besides for Gear and Abilities. I see you have a few mismatched characters up there. Work on First Order's gear and work on Resistance for the Speed Mod challenge.

Factions: You will be using First Order for now as you have most of the essential ones. Get Kylo Ren (Unmasked) [Cantina 3-F] as fast as possible and gear him up as he will need to be your First Order leader. His ship is also very powerful and is farmed there. Star and gear up the First Order Officer, First Order Tie Pilot, and First Order Stormtrooper to put them in your team later. First Order Stormtrooper will replace Phasma as she isn't too good unless she is leader.

Guild: I think that you should stay in the guild you are currently in to get good gear, needed very badly by a lot of characters in the higher levels of gear. The guild tokens are useful for buying gear and character shards that you need. Only buy gear that is crucial to your characters you are working on, once they are good, you can work up others. With the inflow of Raid Han and/or General Kenobi shards from the Heroic raids, you will be able to get a really good team as soon as you can get those characters 7 star and high gear, they are very powerful.

Squad Arena: Use Phasma leader still, Rey (Scavenger), Princess Leia, Stormtrooper Han, and Kylo Ren until you can get your First Order up.

Characters: You need Princess Leia, Stormtrooper Han, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Old Ben), Farmboy Luke, and R2-D2 for Commander Luke Skywalker, so star up an Empire team to get R2. Don't worry too much about it right now, just focus on First Order. Commander Luke is a very good character, one of the best.

After you work up your First Order team, you need to start farming the Phoenix Squadron characters: Hera Syndulla, Ezra Bridger, Chopper, Kanan Jarrus, Garazeb (Zeb) Orrelios, and Sabine Wren (optional, she is super hard to farm). The Phoenix characters will be used for the Thrawn event, which is very difficult. Thrawn is one of the best characters in the game.

Jedi aren't too good right now, so only star them up if you really want a 7 star Grand Master Yoda.

Empire teams are useful, so star up your current Empire characters and use a Rebel team to get Emperor Palpatine (If your current Rebels can't get him, you should be able to gear and mod them until you can, he is a pretty easy event).

That is all I have for you! Sorry it is so long, I was trying to cover everything!

TL;DR

- Work on Health mods until you can get a Resistance team for Speed mods
- Gear and star First Order Characters you have now, get Kylo Ren (Unmasked) and replace Phasma with First Order Stormtrooper once he is high enough.
- Stay in your guild
- After First Order, get Phoenix
- Don't work too much on Jedi
- Get legendary and Hero's Journey characters (not Rey (Jedi Training) yet, she is very hard to get)

This guy nailed it!
However I’d also like to mention these steps as well.

TLDR at the bottom

If you are making first order your arena team, then you will also be able to earn BB8 eventually when it’s event comes back.
BB8 will later lead into earning JTR (Jedi Training Rey)

Also the Pheonix Squad will allow you to earn not only Thrawn but Emperor Palpatine as well!

@Jarvind, what's your fleet arena shard like? If it's a young shard and you were lucky to join early, you could always go all in on pilots and ships to earn some crystals this way. That's what I did on an alt (actually my very first account which I had abandoned for 14 months at level 30ish). The climb in squad arena will be slow. I climbed very slowly to the 300s, where I stalled. I could probably reach top—200, but currently my focus is fleet arena and FO for BB8. I rank top—20 consistently — some days top—10. Maybe you could do the same.

Another milestone is to collect 5 non—capital dark side skips at 4* and 8 non—capital ships of any alignment at 5* to get access to zeta materials.

Regarding legendary/hero toons:
I would focus on CLS first (5 empire toons at 7* for R2D2 — EP can be one of them (requires 5 rebels at 7*) — ST Han, Leia, Old Ben and farmboy all at 7*). Phoenix for Thrawn /Chimaera could be next. Focusing on Phoenix first will delay getting your first legendary and hero character(s). You're already well on the path for CLS whereas you will start from scratch with Phoenix. Furthermore, with CLS you will be able to solo Rancor raids.

Also make sure to have a team of scoundrels to do the highest tier of credit heist ASAP. That should be a priority. You will need those extra millions of credits to develop your roster.

Guild:
You should definately be in a guild that raids Rancor and AAT on heroic tier. If there's fair activity in the guild you will benefit much more from ranking low in those raids than raiding lower tiers.

Mods:
For now just do the mod challenges, you can, once and work with what you get from this (save cantina energy for characters). However, aim to do both health and defense mod challenges at tier 3 once. This will result in better quality mods appearing more frequently in mod shipments. If you see mods with speed primary/secondary stats in shipments, buy them, if you have the spare credits. Speed is important in many game modes (squad arena, raids etc.).

U need to be competitive to get squad arena and fleet arena currency, not to mention buying about 10k crystals monthly for 3x energy and 3x cantina energy refreshes

You receive enough crystals for 3 x energy refreshes daily simply by doing daily challenges, GW, login rewards and rank 1000 in arena. That's fine for a start. It seems like the OP prefers the challenge of developing his old account, and that it will be fun for him.

@Jarvind, what's your fleet arena shard like? If it's a young shard and you were lucky to join early, you could always go all in on pilots and ships to earn some crystals this way. That's what I did on an alt (actually my very first account which I had abandoned for 14 months at level 30ish). The climb in squad arena will be slow. I climbed very slowly to the 300s, where I stalled. I could probably reach top—200, but currently my focus is fleet arena and FO for BB8. I rank top—20 consistently — some days top—10. Maybe you could do the same.

Another milestone is to collect 5 non—capital dark side skips at 4* and 8 non—capital ships of any alignment at 5* to get access to zeta materials.

Regarding legendary/hero toons:
I would focus on CLS first (5 empire toons at 7* for R2D2 — EP can be one of them (requires 5 rebels at 7*) — ST Han, Leia, Old Ben and farmboy all at 7*). Phoenix for Thrawn /Chimaera could be next. Focusing on Phoenix first will delay getting your first legendary and hero character(s). You're already well on the path for CLS whereas you will start from scratch with Phoenix. Furthermore, with CLS you will be able to solo Rancor raids.

Also make sure to have a team of scoundrels to do the highest tier of credit heist ASAP. That should be a priority. You will need those extra millions of credits to develop your roster.

Guild:
You should definately be in a guild that raids Rancor and AAT on heroic tier. If there's fair activity in the guild you will benefit much more from ranking low in those raids than raiding lower tiers.

Mods:
For now just do the mod challenges, you can, once and work with what you get from this (save cantina energy for characters). However, aim to do both health and defense mod challenges at tier 3 once. This will result in better quality mods appearing more frequently in mod shipments. If you see mods with speed primary/secondary stats in shipments, buy them, if you have the spare credits. Speed is important in many game modes (squad arena, raids etc.).

Good luck! :—)

Hey, sorry, I just saw your reply. I'm not sure how I would tell how old my fleet shard is, but I'm at 700-something with mostly newb ships, so I'm guessing not that old. I'm more focused on characters so I can finish events at the moment, but I am grabbing the occasional shipment of ship shards, and farming unmasked Kylo is also getting me his ship, so yay.

I also managed to unlock R2 at 5* today, though getting him to 7 will take a bit longer - the 5th tier was pretty much Darth Vader carrying the team while everyone else absorbed hits and died.